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According to the BBC, Leonard Nimoy surprised fans who were meant to view 'The Wrath of Khan' with an introduction from the actor, with the first screening of Abrams new Star Trek movie. After the film the audience gave a standing ovation.

At the Sydney Opera House premiere of the film the audience repeatedly broke out in spontaneous applause whilst watching the film.

One audience member said it was so good 'it melted my pants!', many others say it is the best Star Trek movie yet.
BBC/Star Trek

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I see your point mate, but I'd rather have Star Trek than no Star Trek at all....also, it looks like a re-boot, fresh characters, the spaceships similar in design but updated, and a cameo part for Nimoy as Spock 'prime'.

The story of how the crew came to be, the days at starfleet academy has never been portrayed on film....so there is a freshness.

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I was a kid (7-9) when the original series came out. Like Rowan & Martin's Laugh In it was one of the few programs my mother let me stay up to watch. She felt that the episodes were something of an education in tolerance and cooperation between disparate cultures: little morality plays.

In hindsight, the first (black and white) season of Lost In Space was better SciFi, but on balance it was a good show and one of the first cult faves that were continued to be produced despite generally low ratings based on strong viewer loyalty.

The Next Generation completely passed me by when it was current, because I didn't buy my first television until 1988 when I was in my late 20s (and then primarily to watch rented videos on: I haven't been a fan of broadcast TV since my early teens). And since the big-budget, special effects mega movie interpretations of Star Trek were precisely the kind of cinematic spectacles I always disdained I've missed those as well without regret.

But in 1989, newly-single and (momentarily) a cable subscriber, I had a regular date with reruns of TNG on early Saturday evenings after work and before dinner and socializing, and acquainted myself with Captain Picard and his crew enough to appreciate how much more refined and subtle the concept had evolved.

It wasn't until 2005 that I finally saw Deep Space Nine and Voyager reruns on Spike on free afternoons. The former left me cold, but the latter really intrigued me and, I gotta admit, hooked me totally (I think Chakotay had something to do with it ).

It was only my appreciation for Voyager that got me at all interested in watching Enterprise reruns on the SciFi channel, and even then it was intermittent, hit-or-miss. Bakula's never done a thing for me, but Connor Trineer definitely rang a couple of my bells. In general, I felt the series was too ambitious in story arcs (without a continual investment of time and a strict following of the episodes in sequential order, it was baffling), and severely hamstrung by the limits of the gizmos available to the characters of the (presumed) 22nd century. It lacks both the gee-whizz toys and compelling interpersonal relationships that made Voyager so intriguing to me.

Stylistically, the first, original series was the only one in any way appealing to me. The esthetics of TNG are about as eye-catching as the speculatively-built suburban office-park developments they so resemble (all beige, mauve and sea-foam green), and Voyager has all the visual appeal of a rented Corolla (a symphony of grays from dove to anthracite). Enterprise, in keeping the tech down to a minimum, has the claustrophobic feeling of being on a submarine, not a starship, and everything looks like it's got five coats of glossy oil-based paint like a battleship fighting the Battle of Midway. And don't even get me started on those astronaut jump-suits.

This new Star Trek movie revives the original series' mod style of miniskirts, go-go boots and big hair (though that's not seen in the clip linked above). From my perspective, that is more important than exploding planets and warp-drive distortions. If the characters are real and interesting and the actors have some chemistry together, it should be hugely successful.

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Hey Bbucko, nice post there....as for the character chemistry, the early reviews are excellent, Chris Pine as Kirk scores, but in particular Karl Urban as McCoy and Simon Pegg as Scotty garnered great reviews.

I'm all for the go-go boots, big hair and short skirts too. Also, Abrams has given more of a nod to the Kitsch appeal of TOS with the green skinned lady playing a small part. (Remember her...always in the closing credits of TOS a la Turkish belly dancer.)

The reviews I have read so far have been excellent....shit, I'm a sad Trek geek!

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According to the BBC, Leonard Nimoy surprised fans who were meant to view 'The Wrath of Khan' with an introduction from the actor, with the first screening of Abrams new Star Trek movie. After the film the audience gave a standing ovation.

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Hey Bbucko, nice post there....as for the character chemistry, the early reviews are excellent, Chris Pine as Kirk scores, but in particular Karl Urban as McCoy and Simon Pegg as Scotty garnered great reviews.

I'm all for the go-go boots, big hair and short skirts too. Also, Abrams has given more of a nod to the Kitsch appeal of TOS with the green skinned lady playing a small part. (Remember her...always in the closing credits of TOS a la Turkish belly dancer.)

The reviews I have read so far have been excellent....shit, I'm a sad Trek geek!

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I remember the green dancer lady well, baby. She was emblematic of the whole erotic charge that TOS did so well and TNG did so poorly. Coming out as it did in the age of AIDS surely played a factor there, along with a kind of latent sexual repression on the part of Gene Roddenberry: there's a whole website devoted to Star Trek's vanilla (and heteronormative) approach to human sexuality. After he died, Voyager heated things back up a bit, though gay/queer sex was still off-limits even if inter-species coupling was not

And although this may sound like I'm protesting too much, I really couldn't label myself a Trekkie at all. I'm much much much more about the Dark Shadows, which is being developed right now as a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp vehicle.

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After he died, Voyager heated things back up a bit, though gay/queer sex was still off-limits even if inter-species coupling was not QUOTE]

You must have missed the one gay episode of all series. It happened in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and it involved Dax, the Trill. She encountered another Trill that she was married to in a prior life only this time the symbiote was in a female host.

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I was a kid (7-9) when the original series came out. Like Rowan & Martin's Laugh In it was one of the few programs my mother let me stay up to watch. She felt that the episodes were something of an education in tolerance and cooperation between disparate cultures: little morality plays.

Stylistically, the first, original series was the only one in any way appealing to me. The esthetics of TNG are about as eye-catching as the speculatively-built suburban office-park developments they so resemble (all beige, mauve and sea-foam green), and Voyager has all the visual appeal of a rented Corolla (a symphony of grays from dove to anthracite). Enterprise, in keeping the tech down to a minimum, has the claustrophobic feeling of being on a submarine, not a starship, and everything looks like it's got five coats of glossy oil-based paint like a battleship fighting the Battle of Midway. And don't even get me started on those astronaut jump-suits.

This new Star Trek movie revives the original series' mod style of miniskirts, go-go boots and big hair (though that's not seen in the clip linked above). From my perspective, that is more important than exploding planets and warp-drive distortions. If the characters are real and interesting and the actors have some chemistry together, it should be hugely successful.

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Good observations on the various series BBucko. I was a kid when TOS aired too, though not as young as you, and I'm looking forward to seeing those characters reworked in the new movie.

My least favorite of the series was DS9... found it too slow, too soap opery, and generally disliked most of the characters, esp. the Ferengi. It got more interesting toward the end of the series with the intensifying of the Cardascian[sp?]/Dominion conflict storyline.

Actually I fairly religiously followed all of the shows (except DS9) and saw all of the feature films. The somewhat pristine-like ergonomics of the ship design of Enterprise D in TNG (I think you compared it to a suburban office park development) was I think deliberate, as was the claustrophobic sheetmetal submarine feel of Enterprise.

I thought Enterprise was a very good show up until they got into that bit about the alien attack against Earth and the subsequent season long quest to find the perps. The storylines got kinda dark that season, as I recall. This too was deliberate, but I didn't think taking the show in that direction was a good call.